The Only Cheese You Should Cook With

If you've ever cooked Italian food, you know the recipes are filled with that costly requirement known as Parmigiano-Reggiano. Here's a workaround.

If you cook any Italian food at all, you're constantly being instructed to grate parmesan cheese — for pasta, for soup, for risotto, for sauce even. Sometimes a particularly serious recipe calls for the more specific Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is made in a small area in northern Italy. But that stuff, while wonderful (especially eaten in chunks while you're cooking), is expensive — and no better for cooking than Pecorino Romano, an unsung hero of the cheese locker.

That is but one piece of essential wisdom from an upcoming book, The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion and Cooking Manual. To quote: "The cheese is dry, dense, and salty with an animally funk. We find it indispensable in the kitchen as an ingredient — it goes in meatbals, braciola, and most of our pastas … [I]t's so affordable, it's the only cheese we cook with."

The book has recipes — many recipes, from the famed Frankies Spuntino in Brooklyn — but perhaps even more important to its being an essential book is the knowledge it contains. Watch Eat Like A Man for more tips going forward.

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